Sigmund Freud wrote that it’s common for suppressed thoughts “to emerge in a slip of the tongue”. Freudian slips not only undermine the persona we project, but authority too: who could forget when George Bush denounced the “brutal invasion of Iraq” when he meant Ukraine? These momentary errors could be viewed as the revenge of a playful unconscious on a self-righteous ego.

With the airing of the final episode of US sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm this evening, it’s worth thinking about the show’s star and creator, Larry David, who, as with these slips, undercuts a preening, smug society. In fact, he’s one big walking verbal slip — the forbidden thought incarnate. Throughout the programme’s run, it has been increasingly rare for any of David’s thoughts to remain unexpressed as he flouts social convention, peppering his interlocutors with queries on dicey terrain.

David is a reminder, then, that occasionally we should let comedy put its foot in its mouth. That Curb, which first aired more than 20 years ago, exists in what is essentially a cultural desert for irreverent comedy makes its final series especially poignant. Could it be the last great sitcom not to be concerned about stepping on eggshells?

The show is brilliant largely because it avoids being mean-spirited. David’s fictionalised self is tactless, but he always addresses the other characters with a guileless curiosity reserved for an equal. He says of a battered woman that she “looks like she can take care of herself”; in a scene with Michael J. Fox, he is unsure if Fox is shaking his head dismissively or if the actor’s Parkinson’s disease is responsible.

Here, the humour is in locating the line, not necessarily to cross it, but to explore the extent of other people’s pieties and vanities. Curb reveals the narcissism and self-regard behind public-facing acts of kindness and voguish groupthink, to which the fictionalised Larry himself is not immune. In this series, he became a Leftist darling when he offered water to a character waiting in line to vote in Atlanta, Georgia — inadvertently breaking a real-life law which doesn’t allow anyone who isn’t an election worker to provide refreshments for voters.

Though poking fun at sacred cows is now too often misconstrued as being unprogressive, David’s stated politics are notably left-of-centre. Still, that hasn’t stopped Curb playing host to actors with opposing views, including series regular and Republican supporter Vince Vaughan. That’s before we get to Cheryl Hines, who plays David’s on-screen wife and in real life is married to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Curb is also a rebuke to the modern trend of obsessively monitoring celebrities’s wrongdoings and keeping exhaustive rap sheets. Guest stars trailing scandals are given the opportunity to skewer themselves and kickstart a redemptive arc through the guzzling of humble pie. Lori Loughlin, who was imprisoned in 2020 for her part in a college bribery scandal, was recently featured on the show, where she cheats at golf. Similarly, Michael Richards has used Curb to mock his own brush with scandal, after he used racial epithets against a heckling audience in 2006.

Nonetheless, Curb doesn’t seek out the political: like Larry, it stumbles upon it. One episode might be about race, the next about David giving a doll a haircut; and his character’s outlook suggests he still lives in a world yet to go berserk about identity.

Comedy should be a safe zone, where bad thoughts can win out. Literalists don’t want this; they want to retroactively punish writers for past transgressions incommensurate with today’s mores, and struggle to tell the difference between a fictional sketch played for absurdity and a comedian’s real-life views. A case in point is an online row from a week ago, when David was accused of racism for a Curb scene in which his character, as a Jewish man, expresses concern about going to eat in a Palestinian restaurant, suspicious that other diners are “planning the next intifada”. That these prejudices are the butt of the joke never seems to occur to these identity-minded critics.

“Political correctness” can be an imprecise catchall term, excessively maligned by dead-eyed comedians who shape their material around being “anti-woke”. Yet Larry, in his floundering attempts to be respectful, provides a far more effective critique of PC attitudes than any partisan diatribe might.

Risk aversion is comedy’s enemy. What is comedy but adult playtime, where the truth, like a slip, can suddenly emerge? There’s a reason children are such incisive truth-tellers: playtime can reveal their unconscious feelings, as the 20th-century psychoanalyst Melanie Klein observed. When asked why he complimented a friend on his young son’s abnormally large penis at a pool party, David simply responds, “I took a risk.” Comedians willing to do the same are a quickly vanishing breed.

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Rory Kiberd is a freelance writer. He has written book reviews for the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Sunday Business Post, as well as film reviews for Totally Dublin.

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